Freedom
by Sphered-Rhyme
Summary: Lassiter meets someone who will give him everything he was searching for, and only after she's gone, does he realize it. Not so much a psych story, really. Lassiter is more of a conduit for a drabble that I needed to get out of my head.


The worn bronze lamp on Detective Lassiter's desk really wasn't his style. Everything else in his home was very modern, tidy, and streamlined. But this lamp wasn't really his. It had been a gift from a victim's mother. Something that she had said her daughter had treasured for many years.

She had told him he'd understand in time. The more he looked at it, the more he sat under its glow and let his mind wander.

Carlton had gotten to know the woman before she passed. She'd been the victim of a failed robbery attempt. The man had tried to rob the antique market where she had a stand. Carlton had been by the flea market multiple times in his life, whether working a case, or because his ex-wife or O'Hara had dragged him. He had always enjoyed her stand.

Her good weren't antiquated relics that held no value to the present. She wasn't peddling junk or old crap that should have been thrown out. She brought over good from all around Africa, from various charities and sold them there. Through talking with her on various occasions, Carlton had found out that she didn't sell them for any profit. She worked the stand as a hobby in her off times from her other job. She did field work at the University of California, spending her days wondering on the shores and caves of the California coastline looking for marine otters. In truth, he didn't understand her work, but he was fascinated by her.

He'd find himself inexplicably drawn to her table each time he went there, spending much of his time just talking with her. Often, she'd bring her dogs with her. Carlton usually wasn't much for animals, but her dogs were two beautiful german shepherds. One of whom he'd actually seen many times before being trained in the same group as some of their police K9s. He had asked her if she was nervous that she'd need the dog for protection, actually finding himself growing concerned for her safety. But she'd just laughed it off. Said that if anyone attacked her that the dog would be her secondary line of defense. They were partners, and she would protect him as fiercely as he would protect her.

After a time, he found himself stopping by there on his breaks, bringing her lunch and sitting with her at her stand while she regaled him with stories from her many travels to Africa. She had spent most of her time in South Africa, traveling among different reserves working with different animal protection units. He had no idea what those were before he'd met her. When he'd shot her a quizzical look, she laughed, saying that they were basically "animal police". They worked together with dogs (and some very heavy weaponry, Carlton noted) to track and take down poachers on reserves throughout the country. She'd been with various different teams over her ten years in the country.

The walls of her stand were plastered with pictures of wildlife from Africa, her and her dogs training, and many pictures of her with teams of others with rifles and military grade armor. He had to admit, he was impressed by her. She was different than a cop, that was for sure. She was more fierce. More attune to her environment than the people in it, though that wasn't to say she couldn't get a read on people. More than once she'd stumped him by playing "psychic" with his mind, and getting exactly what he was thinking. He'd groaned the first time she'd used the term, but he grew to love when she did it to him.

Sitting under the light of the lamp, Carlton was nursing far from his first glass of whiskey. It'd been a few weeks since the accident at the market, and she'd been taken off life-support that morning. She'd tried to keep people at the market calm when the perp had come in, high off his rocker, demanding that every vendor paid up. She was shot while she was trying to help the old vendor across from her after the man had hit her. The perp lost his wits when she moved to help him.

There wasn't going to be a funeral, just a gathering of a few friends and family.

The lamp, though old, and well past its time, still drew the eye in. It had at its base, a small iron giraffe, and various wooden carvings of animals stuck to the base around it. He let his head fall back against his chair, and though to all the stories she would tell him about her time in Africa, all the wildlife she encountered. He'd never seen anyone's eyes sparkle as hers would when she spoke of those times. She was someone who had something she was truly passionate about, and knew true happiness at points in her life.

He found himself in his dreams surrounded by the views from the pictures he'd seen on her walls; African sunsets, zebra running across the plains, cheetah cubs fighting and tumbling around in front of him, while their mother watched from under a bush nearby. The beauty of it overwhelmed him, and he woke crying.

He went to the gathering of family, where her mother had found him. She told him that her daughter's only wish was that someone take care of her dogs, and that her ashes be scattered out upon the various reserves she'd been to in her time. She broke down in tears telling him that neither her nor her husband were in good enough health to fulfill either of those wishes. He still doesn't know what came over him, but Carlton said he'd do it.

He'd gone into the Chief's office the next day and told her he was going to use his three months of saved up vacation time, and left before she had a chance to protest.

He spent those three months traveling across South Africa, two dogs and a bag of ashes in tow. She had been right; something about Africa seemed more like home than anywhere he'd ever been before. The clear nights out on the reserves, listening to the night around him, the sunsets over the flat plains, and beautiful mountains, nothing in his life had ever given him such a sense of freedom and peace.

He'd returned to Santa Barbara a week before he was to go back into work, and he was sitting under the lamp again. It was only then he noticed a small piece of paper tacked to the inside of the lamp shade.

"There is a wonderful, mythical law of nature, that three things we crave the most in life: happiness, freedom, and peace of mind, are always attained by giving them to someone else."


End file.
